Thriving among uncertainty
Akaroa’s marine reserve has shown in its 10 years how much of a boon it can be to marine life and eco-tourism. Yet, just 0.4% of New Zealand’s marine environment is within one. So why aren’t there more? Keiller MacDuff reports.
The harbour glistens as the Akaroa Dolphins launch navigates towards the Dan Rogers cliffs. There’s a celebratory feel – dignitaries, activists and conservationists mingle with schoolchildren and Jimmy the yorkshire terrier, a dolphin dog in training.
The harbour cruise, timed for during Seaweek, celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the Akaroa Marine Reserve last month.
Its creation took 20 years, countless consultations and meetings, eight ministers of conservation and a judicial review, but the reserve has boosted both marine life and Akaroa’s eco-tourism industry.
But how did it take 20 years to get this marine reserve, and will it take another 20 to get the next one?
New Zealand pioneered marine reserves. The country’s first, Cape Rodney to Okakari Point Marine Reserve (also known as Goat Island Marine Reserve), proposed in 1965 and established in 1977, was thought to be the first no-take marine reserve of its type in the world, and the legislation passed in the interim world leading.
But progress has stagnated – the legislation is now considered drastically outdated, with the agency mandated to manage reserves – the Department of Conservation (DOC) – calling the 50-yearold act “ineffective” and “cumbersome”.
DOC’s 2023 briefing to incoming Conservation Minister Tama Potaka outlined ongoing work towards marine protection in the Hauraki Gulf, Kermadec Islands and the southeast of the South Island, where six new marine reserves have been approved but are yet to be gazetted.
DOC warns that while the reserves are “regionally significant”, they will “not contribute significantly to greater national oceans coverage”, which needs new marine protected areas.
Just last month, the Government announced the death-knell of the decadeslong bid to create a huge sanctuary in the Kermadecs.
New Zealand’s coastal marine area is more than 15 times larger than its land area, and its exclusive economic zone is the fourth largest in the world.
About a third of our plant and animal species are found at sea, and half of those are found nowhere else on Earth.
But despite signing on to a global target in 2022 to protect 30% of the marine environment by 2030, just 0.4% of New Zealand’s marine environment is within a marine reserve.
That leaves New Zealand in an unenviable spot on the league table, tied with Russia and China for joint last place globally, World Wildlife Fund chief executive Dr Kayla Kingdon-Bebb says.
The Akaroa reserve shows protected areas are critical to biodiversity restoration and recovery, providing “safe havens for our most threatened species”.
But the fact it took so long to establish, and that there hasn’t been another created since, underscores how “wildly out of date” the legislation is, Kingdon-Bebb says.
Once the idea of a marine reserve in Canterbury emerged in the early 1990s, the location was quickly narrowed to Akaroa Harbour.
It was already the site of New Zealand’s first Marine Mammal Sanctuary – created in 1988 to protect endangered upokohue/ Hector’s dolphins from commercial gill nets – but fish stocks were dwindling.
A clear choice emerged – the southeastern part of the harbour, referred to as Dan Rogers Bluff, with its diverse habitats, adjoining land reserves, scenic and wilderness values, and easy access by boat, kayak or passenger cruises.
The Akaroa Marine Protection Society lodged the formal application in January 1996. The 512-hectare reserve would cover about one-tenth of the harbour, a ‘no-take’ area where fishing and other forms of harvesting would be banned.
When it opened in 2014, there were 44 marine reserves in New Zealand, a number that remains the same a decade on.
Society president Jan Cook had no idea of the gruelling task ahead when she got involved. But their persistence paid off, and the health of the harbour “has never been better”, Akaroa Dolphins skipper Hugh Waghorn tells the 10th anniversary attendees.
“There’s lots of things you can attribute that to
... some say it’s because of cruise ships not coming back. I think it’s a combination, including the great work of DOC and the taiāpure, but probably the most important thing that’s increased the health of the whole harbour is the marine reserve.” (Taiāpure is a mechanism for Māori to retain ownership and management over customary fishing grounds.)
Waghorn tells of how rare it was to see orcas when he started out two decades ago. Now he sees visiting pods about 20 times a year.
The harbour’s two reserves – Akaroa and Pōhatu – make up two of the three marine reserves on the east coast of New Zealand (the third is Hikurangi Marine Reserve, south of Kaikōura).
The smaller Pōhatu Marine Reserve (215ha), now home to thousands of whiteflippered penguins and a seal colony, was proposed by local fishing groups in 1995 as an alternative to the Akaroa Marine Reserve. Cook says the tactic “back-fired”.
Given the lack of opposition, the proposal sailed through and was gazetted in 1999, but “the regeneration was so rapidly evident it served to fuel, rather than quell, the desire for another, more accessible reserve”.
In 2003, a taiāpure was proposed for the whole of the harbour, allowing fishing with some additional controls. The Māori Land Court found a marine reserve alongside the taiāpure “made sense” and recommended the proposed reserve be excluded, enabling both to proceed.
But in 2010, the conservation minister at the time, Kate Wilkinson, declined the reserve on the grounds it would unduly interfere with recreational fishing.
Faced with the need for significant funds and legal representation, Cook says it felt like “the end of the road”.
But environmental law specialists Rob Enright and Rob Makgill began representing the marine society and won a judicial review that quashed the minister’s decision. She had failed to consider the benefits of the spillover effect (bigger fish and more successful breeding in surrounding areas).
In 2013, her successor as minister, Nick Smith, approved the reserve and it was finally gazetted on World Oceans Day, June 8, 2014.
Society members Brian and Kathleen Reid were driving forces behind the reserve. They never gave up, despite repeated setbacks, because they “never saw an argument against it that held water”, Brian Reid says.
Once a commercial fisherman who “didn’t much like what he saw”, it was as a member of the local dive club that the obvious degradation became unavoidable, he says.
But it wasn’t until a handful of members attended a talk by Auckland University scientist Bill Ballantine, known as the father of marine reserves, that they decided to get active.
Brian Reid is aware marine reserves do not resolve threats to the ocean, such as climate change, but believes every little bit counts. “We live on this planet but we’re very disrespectful to other species a lot of the time.”
Enright says barriers to future marine reserves come down to “political will and data”. There was a lot of evidence for “the halo effect” of reserves (benefits to adjacent areas) that made them a “winwin” proposition as long as the customary interests of tangata whenua had been addressed.
Their creation needs to be iwi and hapū-led, respecting mana moana, he says, acknowledging the “disconnect on this particular case”.
But cold hard numbers to support reserves were hard to find. “You need good data to justify areas, big enough areas that they’re effective, and monitoring to prove efficacy – but otherwise it’s down to political will.”
DOC operations manager Andy Thompson says the department needs more time before it can say anything definitive about the reserve’s impacts.
There has been regular monitoring using baited underwater cameras since 2017, suggesting blue cod are found in similar numbers in the reserve and at nearby control areas, but cod in the reserve tends to be larger, he says.
A 2022 Fisheries Assessment Report disagreed, stating they “are not functioning as intended for blue cod, with fish equally as abundant and of similar size in the adjacent fished areas”, but Professor Emeritus Liz Slooten says cod is the wrong choice for evaluating marine reserves.
Reserves make up an “infinitesimal” part of the territory of large, fast-moving animals such as dolphins, seabirds and, to a lesser extent, cod, making counts problematic. “Usually these kinds of marine reserves will have a very good effect on species that are not very mobile, like paua and crayfish.”
There is research to show more crayfish sightings in recent years – something not seen outside the reserve – and both University of Otago research and work with the local tourism industry shows the reserve is “a hotspot” for upokohue/ Hector’s dolphins, Thompson says.
“It’s also worth noting it can take some time for changes to take place in these ecosystems, so it may be too early to see the full benefits of the reserve,” a DOC spokesperson says, noting more data collected in 2023 has yet to be analysed.
Thompson acknowledges the “significant gaps” in marine protection, but says protected areas must be developed collaboratively, noting the pushback to the Akaroa Marine Reserve, particularly from local iwi.
Ōnuku Rūnanga chairperson Rik Tainui says his rūnanga and Ngāi Tahu had opposed the marine reserve because it extinguished customary fishing rights.
Now, though, they were focused on the “effective management of the Akaroa taiāpure to deliver customary fishing outcomes ... including contemporary mahinga kai (food gathering) through aquaculture” and reviewing the “outdated” Marine Reserves Act.
Like Thompson, Tainui cites seafloor mapping project Iongairo as an “excellent example of collaboration” between the papatipu rūnanga of Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū (Banks Peninsula), DOC and Environment Canterbury.
While the Marine Reserves Act does not mention the Treaty of Waitangi, DOC’s mandate derives from the Conservation Act, requiring it to give effect to Treaty principles.
Other legislation, such as the Treaty of Waitangi (Fisheries Claims) Settlement Act 1992, acknowledges the Treaty’s guarantee of “full exclusive and undisturbed possession and te tino rangatiratanga of their fisheries”.
Former conservation minister Eugenie Sage was a Forest & Bird campaigner during the “long, difficult” fight for the Akaroa Marine Reserve.
Without volunteers like the Reids, and later the decision of the Māori Land Court to exclude the reserve area from the taiāpure, there wouldn’t be a reserve today, she says.
Despite the strong opposition, the reserve’s benefits have reached beyond conservation to fishing and the economy, Sage says, pointing to the spillover effect alongside the boost to nature-based tourism. (A 2018 study found Hector’s dolphin eco-tourism boosts Canterbury’s economy by about $23m a year.)
Akaroa is a shining example of how biodiversity can thrive in a marine reserve, Sage says, but she echoes the need for new legislation with a strong Treaty basis.
“We need fisheries management which recognises we are overfishing and harming the health of the oceans, particularly with warming sea temperatures and the die-off of big kelp beds.”
Akaroa Marine Reserve Protection Society spokesperson Suky Thompson says the lack of new reserves is simply due to years of opposition from commercial, recreational and customary fishers.
Her main concern is the strict criteria for their purpose – solely for scientific study – “not to protect fish stocks, not for economic benefit, biodiversity or anything else”.
The surge in eco-tourism related to dolphin and whale activity, the constant need for DOC to issue warnings and prosecute fishers venturing into the reserve, and craypots set on its borders, point to their effectiveness, she says.
Slooten says too much industry involvement in consultation and working groups is the main hindrance to the creation of more reserves, and has compromised New Zealand’s environmental standing. “Clean, green, environmentally sensible New Zealand? 0.4%? How pathetic is that?”
Slooten puzzles at the motivation to preserve fishing at all costs given how small the reserve areas are.
“It’s so illogical, it has to be a sort of ideological opposition rather than anything rational. Do you really want 100%? Is 99.6% not good enough?’’